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NASA, Haise in spotlight this week in Jackson

Economic Council has a sell-out crowd

By J.R. WELSH
jrwelsh@sunherald.com

STENNIS SPACE CENTER --

The Coast will be well represented Wednesday at the annual conference of the Mississippi Economic Council in Jackson, with a Hancock County-based traveling exhibit celebrating the 50th anniversary of NASA and a keynote address by a Biloxi-born veteran astronaut.

Apollo astronaut Fred Haise will deliver a luncheon address at the meeting at the Jackson Marriott. The 74-year-old space explorer's topic will be "Failure is not an option."

The Economic Council serves as Mississippi's statewide chamber of commerce. President Blake Wilson said this year's conference is sold out, with 1,000 seats committed.

Aside from the keynote by Haise, an address also will be delivered by Gov. Haley Barbour. Additional remarks will be made by Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant and Rep. Percy Watson, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Conference sessions will include presentations on courts and justice, technology and defense, and economic development. But a lot of the glory will go to NASA and Hancock County's John C. Stennis Space Center, where rocket testing for the space program has occurred since the 1960s.

"NASA plays a big part in the Mississippi economy with Stennis Space Center," Wilson said. "And everyone knows if you want to go into space, you have to come through Mississippi first, with rocket testing at Stennis."

The NASA anniversary exhibit is housed on the Coast at Stennis when it's not on display around the country. "It travels around a good bit," NASA spokesman Paul Foerman said.

He said the display includes highlights of historic NASA achievements and a rock from the moon. A walk-around NASA mascot in a spacesuit also will be on hand, and conference participants can watch space videos and have their photographs taken with a space background.

The name of Haise, now 74, is synonymous with U.S. space exploration, but he began as a local boy on the Coast. He was born in Biloxi and graduated from Biloxi High School and Perkinston Junior College, then went on to major in aeronautical engineering at the University of Oklahoma.

Haise was a Marine Corps pilot before entering the astronaut corps at Johnson Space Center in 1966. He served on backup crews for several missions in the Apollo years, then was lunar module pilot for the aborted Apollo 13 mission in 1970.

He later flew five flights as commander of the space shuttle Enterprise and retired from NASA in 1979. Then he worked for Grumman Aerospace Corp. until 1996. Haise's role in space flight was portrayed by actor Bill Paxton in the movie, "Apollo 13."

Stennis Space Center has performed rocket propulsion testing since the Apollo program in the 1960s and early 1970s.

In 1971, it was announced that Stennis would continue with testing on engines for the space shuttle program. Stennis crews are now building a new test stand to take space exploration to its next level when the shuttle program is phased out.